Module 2: Language of Mathematics

Theme 1: Sets
A set is a collection of objects. We describe a set by listing all of its elements (if this set is nite and not too big) or by specifying a property that uniquely identies it. Example 1: The set of all decimal digits is

But to dene a set of all even positive integers we write:

where is a natural number

The last denition can be also written in another form, namely:

is an even natural number

In the rest of this course, we shall either write This notation is called the set builder. Let be a set such that elements

property describing or

property describing ,

where or should be read as such as. Both are used in discrete math, however, we prefer the former. belong to it. We shall write

if is an element of . If does not belong to we denote it as . Uppercase letters are usually used to denote sets. Some letters are reserved for often used sets such as the set of natural numbers

(i.e., set of all counting numbers), the set of integers

(i.e., positive and negative natural numbers together with zero), and

the set of rational numbers which are ratios of integers, that is, The set We shall write Example 2: The set subset of that is not an element of Two sets and is said to be a subset of to indicate that

.A .

set with no elements is called the empty (or null) set and is denoted as . if and only if every element of is a subset of . . Actually, in this case or ).
are

is also an element of

is a subset of

is a proper

, and we write it as

. By proper we mean that there exits at least one element of

(in our example such elements are , or

are equal if and only if they have the same elements. We will subsequently and

make this statement more precise. For example, the sets

equal since order does not matter for sets. When the sets are nite and small, one can verify this 1

by listing all elements of the sets and comparing them. However, when sets are dened by the set builder it is sometimes harder to decide whether two sets are equal or not. For example, is the set

(i.e., solutions of this weird looking equation

, where

equal to ? Therefore, we introduce another equivalent denition:

and whenever

, then

if whenever

)
, then

. The last statement can be written as follows:

if and only if (To see this, one can think of two real numbers show that sets. If is, is nite, then the number of elements of and

(1)

and that are equal; to prove this fact it sufces to

.) This equivalence is very useful when proving some theorems regarding is called its cardinality and denoted as , that

number of elements in A A set is said to be innite if it has an innite number of elements. For example, the cardinality of is , while

is an innite set.
, then there are

The set of all subsets of a given set Example 3: If

is called the power set and denoted . subsets of , namely:

Thus the cardinality of is Theorem 1. If Proof:1 The set

if

. .

Now, we shall prove our rst theorem about sets. , then

has

elements and we can name them any way we want. For example, , say , contains some elements form

. Any subset of

elements or better we can associate with every element

. We can list these

which is set to be

an indicator of

and zero otherwise. More formally, for every subset

we construct an indicator belongs to ; other-

with understanding that

if and only if the th element of

wise we set

. For example, for

an element of

(i.e.,

) while

, the identier of is since is not

, that is,

and

. Observe that every set of

desired cardinality of . Since can take only two values, and there are possibilities the total number of indicators is
, which is the cardinality of . This completes the proof.

has a unique indicator

. Thus counting the number of indicators will give us the

The Cartesian product of two sets where

and

and

, denoted by

, is the set of ordered pairs

, that is,

and

This proof can be omitted in the rst reading.

U A B A B AB U A B B

AB

AB

B = UB

Figure 1: Venn diagrams for the union, intersection, difference, and complementary set. Example 4: If
and

, then

of

In general, we can consider Cartesian products of three, four, or sets. If

, then an element

is called an -tuple.

We now introduce set operations. Let intersection , and the difference

and

be two sets. We dene the union

, the

, respectively, as follows:

Example 5: Let
and

or

and and

, then

We say that sets. 3 and are disjoint if

, that is, there is no element that belongs to both

Sometimes we deal with sets that are subsets of a (master) set

. We will call such a set the

universal set or the universe. One denes the complement of the set , denoted as , as diagrams as shown in Figure 1, which is self-explanatory. When is, and

We can represent visually the union, intersection, difference, and complementary set using Venn are disjoint, the cardinality of (provided is the sum of cardinalities of and and , that

). This identity is not true when

are not disjoint, yielding

since the intersection part would be counted twice!. To avoid this, we must subtract

The above property is called the principle of inclusion-exclusion. An astute reader may want to generalize this to three and more sets. For example, consider the sets from Example 5. Note that
, while , and , thus

We have already observed some relationships between set operations. For example, if , then , but . There are more to discover. We list these identities in Table 1. Table 1: Set Identities Identity Name Identity Laws

Domination laws Idempotent laws

Complementation laws Commutative laws

Associative laws Distributive laws De Morgans laws

We will prove several of these identities, using different methods. We are not yet ready to use sophisticated proof techniques, but we will be able to use either Venn diagrams or the the principle 4

expressed in (1) (i.e., to prove that two sets are equal it sufces to show that one set is a subset of the other and vice versa). The reader may want to use Venns diagram to verify all the identities of Table 1. Example 6: Let us prove one of the identities, say De Morgans law, showing that and . First suppose or which implies that . Hence, or .

(observe this by drawing the Venn diagram or referring to the logical de Morgan laws discussed in Module 1). Thus, Hence Suppose now that , that is, which implies or . This further implies that . This shows that or .

, and therefore

. This proves

, and completes the proof

of the De Morgan law. Exercise 2A: Using the same arguments as above prove the complementation law.

Theme 2: Relations
In Theme 1 we dened the Cartesian product of two sets ordered pairs
such that

and

and

, denoted as

, as the set of

. We can use this to dene a (binary) relation if it is a subset of the Cartesian product

We say that is a binary relation from

, then we write

to

. If

and say that and

is related to . . Dene the relation as

Example 7: Let

divides

where by divides we mean with zero remainder. Then

We now dene two important sets for a relation, namely, its domain and its range. The domain of is dened as

and for some

while the range of is the set

and for some

In words, the domain of is composed of all all

for which there is such that . The set of . while the range is .

such that there exists is the range of

Example 8: In Example 7 the domain of that domain of is a subset of

is the set

. Observe

while the range is a subset of

There are several important properties that are used to classify relations on sets. Let relation on the set . We say that: ;

be a

is reexive if for every

is symmetric if implies for all

is antisymmetric if and implies that is transitive if and implies for all

Example 9: Consider the relation is:

and let

. Observe that

not reexive since ; not symmetric since for example but 6

not antisymmetric since and but not transitive since

and , but

.
. The

On the other hand, consider this relation

relation is reexive, transitive, but not symmetric, however, its antisymmetric, as easy to check. Exercise 2B: Let

. Is the following relation

reexive, symmetric, antisymmetric, or transitive? Relations are used in mathematics and in computer science to generalize and make more rigorous certain commonly acceptable notion. For example, is a relation that denes equality between elements. Example 10: Let

be the set of rational numbers, that is, ratios of integers. Then means that has the same value as . For example, . The relation partitions the set of all rational numbers into subsets such every subset contains all numbers that are equal. Observe that

is reexive, symmetric and transitive. Indeed,

is the same as

, and nally if

and

, then

. Such relations are called equivalence relations and they play important

role in mathematics and computer science. A relation set

that is reexive, symmetric, and transitive is called an equivalence relation on the divides (actually, partitions) the set of all rational

. As we have seen above, the relation

numbers into disjoint sets that cover the the whole set of rational numbers. Let us generalize this. For an equivalence relation we dene the equivalence set for any

denoted by

as follows

In words, the whole set sets).

is the set of all elements

such that and

are related by . This is a special set, and are disjoint and is the sum of disjoint equivalence

as we formally explain below. Informally, the two different equivalence sets is partitioned into disjoint equivalence sets (i.e.,

More formally, observe that if , hence , then . Thus

, then

. Indeed, let

. We shall prove that

and from

and transitivity we conclude that

, hence .

, as needed. In a similar manner we can prove that (by denition of

which proves that

Clearly if

logically equivalent, manner: If into disjoint subsets other words, the set

). The latter can be expressed in a different, but (this is an example of counterpositive can be partitioned . In belongs to exactly one equivalence class

, then

argument discussed in Module 1: Basic Logic). We should conclude that the set such that every element of

is a partition of discuss.

There is one important example of equivalence classes, called congruence class, that we must Example 11: Fix a number that is a positive integer (i.e., a natural number). Let integers. We dene a relation on be the set of all

such that since

by if is divisible by , that is, there is an integer

. We will write

for , or more often

a relation is also called congruence modulo n. For example,

since

, but

. Such

is not divisible by .

It is not difcult to prove that

. If

is reexive, symmetric and transitive. Indeed,

, then

let

and

. That is,

since

and

implies

. Then

. Finally,

since

hence Since

is an equivalence relation, we can dene equivalence classes which are called congruence

classes. From the denition we know that

for some

Example 12: Congruence classes modulo

are

In words, an integer belongs to one of the above classes because when dividing by the remainder is either or or or or , but nothing more than this. We have seen before that the relation the same with well known

was generalized to the equivalence relations. Let us do

if

and

relation. Notice that it denes an order among of real number. Let now Clearly, this relation is reexive and transitive because

and if unless

and

, then

. It is denitely not symmetric since

doe snot imply and

. Actually, it is easy to see that it is antisymmetric since if

, then

. We

call such relations partial orders. More precisely, a relation reexive, antisymmetric, and transitive. Example 13: Let if divides (evenly) for we saw in Example 11. It is not symmetric (indeed,

on a set

is partial order if

is

. This relation is reexive and transitive as

divides but not the other way around). Is it

antisymmetric? Let divides and divides , that is, there are integers and such that

and

. That is,

, hence

. Since

we must have

Thus is antisymmetric.

total order) since for

that and

A reexive, antisymmetric, and transitive relation

is called partial order (not just an order or

it may happen that neither . If for all

nor

. In Example 13 we see

we have either

or

, then

denes a

total order. For example, the usual ordering of real numbers denes a total ordering, but pairs of real numbers in a plane dene only a partial order.

Theme 3: Functions
Functions are one of the most important concepts in mathematics. They are also special kinds of relations. Recall that a relation

from

also that the domain of is the set of

to

is a subset of the Cartesian product

. Recall

such that there exists related to through , that is, there is

. For relations it is not important that for every

related to

by

. Moreover, it is from

legitimate to have two s, say and such that and for some . These two properties are eliminated in the denition of a function. More formally, we dene a function denoted as to as a relation from is

to ;

having two additional properties:

1. The domain of 2. If

and

, then

The last item means that if there is an such that it is related to and , then must be equal to

. In other words, there is no that has two different values of related to it. We shall use lowercase letters , , , etc. to denote functions. Furthermore, when

we shall

write it as

. Finally, we will also use another standard notation for functions, namely:

Functions are also called mappings or transformations. The second property of the function denition is very important, so we characterize it in another way. Consider a relation on and

. Dene

Observe that is a set. It may be empty, may contain one element or many elements. When is a function, then is not empty for every dened as

and in fact it contains exactly one element that is denoted as for a function
for some

called an image of . More generally, the image of

is

In other words, is a subset of Figure 2 the image of

is

for which there is

such that

. For example in
to

Example 14: (a) Consider the relation . It is a function since every

from

has exactly one image in

. In fact,
and

and

. Figure 2 shows a graphical representation of this function.

is not a function since have the same

(b) The relation image .

10

1 2 3

a b c d

Figure 2: The function

dened in Example 14.

8

4 4

2 2

-3

-2

-1

1 x

-3

-2

-1

1 x

(a) Figure 3: Plots of two functions: (a)

(b)

; (b)

Functions are often represented by mathematical formulas. For example, we can write for every real , or more formally

or

To visualize such functions we often graph them in the coordinates where Example 15: In Figure 3 we draw the functions are dened on the set of reals hence the range of

which is the domain for both functions. Since

and

. Both functions

and

is the set of nonnegative reals while for

and

it is the set of positive reals. That is,

Exercise 2C: What is the image of for function

? What about the image of

over the

? 11

There are some functions occurring so often in computer science that we must briey discuss them here. The rst function, the modulus operator, we already studied in Example 11. We say that

is equal to the remainder when is divided by (we, of course, implicitly assume that

, i.e., and are integers). We recall that

and .

is equivalent to

used

before. For example, We shall write this function as

with the understanding that is the remainder of the division range of to the set

. The domain of such a function is

the set of integers, while the image (or range) is the set of natural numbers. In fact, we can restrict the between and .

because the remainder of any division by must be an integer

, then

The other important and often used functions are the oor and ceiling of a real number. Let

the greatest integer less than or equal to the least integer greater than or equal to

For example,

Finally, we introduce some classes of functions as we did with relations. Consider the function

shown in Figure 3(a). We have

, that is, there are two values of that to is one-to-one or injective if there

are mapped into the same value of (or with the same image). This is an example of a function that is not one-to-one or injective. We say that a function are

for each

from

there is at most one

such that if

, then

. In other words, for one-to-one function

with

. The function in Figure 3(b) is one-to-one,

as easy to see. Example 16: Consider

from

to

. This function is injective.

How to know weather a function is one-to-ne or not? We provide some conditions below. We rst introduce increasing and decreasing functions. A function decreasing) if
( ) whenever

for all

is increasing (non. For example, the

12

function

is increasing in the domain

is decreasing (non-increasing) if will be.

(cf. Figure 3(b)). Similarly, a function

) whenever

for all

. For

an increasing (decreasing) function the bigger the value of The function

is, the bigger (smaller) the value of

. However, it is a decreasing function for all negative reals and increasing in the set of all positive
reals. In Example 16 we have is said to be onto Example 17: Let numbers. Clearly,

plotted in Figure 3(a) is neither increasing or decreasing in the domain

. A function
be such that , thus it is onto

from

to

such that

or surjective function.

, where

. But if we dene

is the set of positive real

with

, then such a function is not surjective. that is both injective and surjective is called a bijection. The function in as

A function inverse function

Example 16 is a bijection while the function in Example 17 is not. For a bijection we can dene an

that is,

and

switch their roles. Observe that we do not need to have bijection in order to dene

the inverse since: (i) the domain of the inverse function is every there must be such that and this is guaranteed by the requirement that Example 18. Let restrict the domain range, that is, is

; (ii) There must be only one such that

is one-to-one function.

and by the denition of a function, for

be such that
. Now

. This is not a one-to-one function. Let us

to the set of nonnegative reals

and we do the same with the

has an inverse function dened on

which

Finally, we dene the composition of two functions. Let and Then for every Example 19: Let

we nd

, but for such we compute and is denoted as

function is called the composition of

and

. The resulting

Then Example 20: Let

and

. The composition

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Theme 4: Sequences, Sums, and Products

Sequences are special functions whose domain is the set of natural numbers

, that is,

is a sequence. We shall write

or

to denote an

element of a sequence, where the letter

in can be replaced by any other letter, say or . Since a sequence is a set we often write it as or simply .

Example 21: Let

for

. That is, the sequence

starts with

If

, then the sequence begins with

Finally,

looks like

by selecting only some terms. For

We can create another sequence from a given sequence example, we can take very second term of the sequence can denote such a sequence (subsequence) as

, that is,

. This amounts

to restricting the domain to a subset of natural numbers. If we denote this subset as

where

. Another way of denoting a subsequence is

, then we

is a subsequence of natural numbers, that is, , that is,

. It is usually

required that

is an increasing sequence.

There is one important subsequence that we often use. Namely, dene Sometimes, we shall denote such a sequence as

Example 22: Let . The rst terms are . Take every second term to produce a sequence that starts . We can write it as or as . Sequences are important since they are very often used in computer science. They are frequently used in sums and products that we discuss next. Consider a (sub)sequence

and add all the elements to yield

To avoids the dots we have a short hand notation for such sums, namely

14

In the above, we use different indices of summation ,

or since they do not matter. What matters

is the lower bound and the upper bound of the index of summation, and the sequence itself. In a similar manner we can dene the product notation. For the above case instead of writing

we simply write

Example 23: Here are some examples:

Exercise 2D: Find 1.

2.

We have to learn how to manipulate sums and products. Observe that

. We obtained exactly the same

In the above we change the index of summation from sum

for some

. In general, when we change index , we must change the lower summation index from

to

to, say

to

, the upper

summation index from

to

, and

must be replaced by

Example 24: This is the most sophisticated example in this module, however, it is important that the reader understands it. We consider a special sequence called the geometric progression. It is dened as follows: Fix
and dene

for

. This sequence begins with

Let us now consider the sum of the rst terms of such a sequence, that is,

(2)

15

Can we nd a simple formula for such a sum? Consider the following chain of implications

where the second line follows from the change of the index summation factor

in front of the sum, while in the last line we replaced

, in the third line we

by as dened in (2). Thus

we prove that

from which we nd :

as long as

. Therefore, the complicated sum as in (2) has a very simple closed-form solution

given above. An unconvinced reader may want to verify on some numerical examples that these two formulas give the same numerical value.

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